Never How I Thought It Was
by swscreams
Summary: Dreams. Everyone has them. It lets your brain process things so you don't go crazy. But what if that isn't what dreams are? What if there is something more to them, and we just haven't figured it out yet? Because my dreams certainly aren't normal...


Authors note: This is my first attempt at posting something I have written, and I hope that criticism pours in. I am posting here both to appease the itch to write by getting these stories out of my head, and to see what I could do better. Feel free to pick this all apart and tell me what can be improved...and I hope ya'll like it! :)

This is a prologue, of sorts, giving you some background to what is going to happen, and in general being a bit boring...but hopefully not too bad. I shall probably be going more by the books, though I might occasionally stray into the movies. I liked the books better for the most part, so that is what I shall use. There will be some romance later on, though not right away. Legolas/OC, and OC/OC, I think. We shall see when we get there.

**Disclaimer**:I can lay no claim on anything written by Mr. Tolkien, nor do I wish to. I only own those characters and plots that sprang from my own mind, and will make no money from any of this.

Aaron, and Derek were still in bed, and I could hear them having a snoring war in their bedroom. I peeked in, and smirked. Aaron's light hair was a wreck, and his mouth hung wide as he snored. Derek looked more like my brother than Aaron did, with his dark hair and dusting of freckles, while Aaron looked like a ray of sun, with his fair skin, and light eyes and hair. He twitched and muttered something before his snores blasted out louder than before and I closed the door, shaking my head.

It was raining, but I decided to go out running anyways. It was a warm rain, I knew, as it was moving into June, and not falling too heavily. I was glad that the incessant rain would be tapering off now, and the temperatures would be creeping up. As I untangled my shoes from the pile by the door, my thoughts took a more solemn turn as flickers of the dream that had woken me up surfaced in my mind, and I shuddered.

A man...if you could call him that, though he seemed to be so much more, was always the center of these dreams. He was a tall man and beautiful, the word handsome somehow didn't fit. His height and carriage gave him a regal appearance, someone to be respected. Sometimes there was a woman with him, his wife I assumed, who was equally beautiful. So beautiful..but so sad, with a haunted look in her moss green eyes. The man wasn't sad though; no he was full of life, his eyes seemed to burn with it. The burning though, wasn't just life. There was something more, something that inspired fear and loathing in me, though I didn't even know him. There was an air about him that was predatorial, hungry and destructive. He always had a sword on his belt, a long, elegant-handled thing in a black sheath wound about with silver veining. This always struck me as odd. Who uses swords like that anymore? And why was it so often in my dreams?

I would talk to Aaron about it later. From his perspective, he might have seen something I missed to help things make sense. I forget sometimes, how weird it is that we share these 'dreams'. To us, it's just part of our lives. A psychologist we'd been forced to go to once told us that it was because we were so close, but soon after this we began to hide that we had them, or any other oddities at all. Our strange habits gained more attention than we were comfortable with, and all we wanted was to be left alone. We tried to blend with the world, neither of us had any desire to be different.

Calling these dreams sounded...wrong somehow. They didn't feel anything like dreams, they had the quality of a memory complete with smell, sounds, and feelings. They were too real. The one time Aaron had tried to explain that they were not dreams, the time we had been told it was a coincidence, he defended against it so vehemently that we had nearly been declared insane. After that, I had told him not to speak of it anymore.

Abruptly, my phone rang, startling me back to reality. I sighed when I saw the name on the ID.

"Micah, I know you said that you were going to take today off, but Chris just called in, and we are short by three people now. Is there any way you could come in? Just for a few hours?"

I really didn't want to,and nearly said no on the spot. I had promised Aaron that we would go to see a movie today. He was celebrating his own new job, and wanted to treat me to lunch and a movie, since we had been so busy lately that we hadn't been able to talk much. I wanted to say no, and nearly did, but I knew very well that Luke wouldn't call me unless he had no other choice. I was the last one Luke would call today, since I was actually going to take a day off for the first time since I had started working for him almost two years ago.

"After lunch is as early as I can come, I can't be there any earlier than two. I had some plans, but I'll re-arrange. You owe me though Luke. You owe me big."

"I know I do. Thank you so much. See you then."

I threw the phone on the counter, not wanting to be bothered any more. I wanted to run in peace. I took my usual route, down the road, and across a few of the neighbors' fields, relishing the burn in my calves as I chose hilly paths. We had been lucky, finding this small house here. It was just outside of the noise of Huntington without being so far away to be inconvenient, and was just a short drive from Angelina Forest. Aaron and I shared a deep love of the woods, and spent as much time there as possible, which lately had been nearly no time at all. It was a nice stretch, and the rain was gone by the time I got back, giving way to the sun. As it heated my skin and dried my clothes, my annoyance with Luke evaporated, and I felt myself relax, as though the sun was massaging away the knots in my mood.

Aaron was up when I got back, and he grinned at me blearily.

"G'morning."

He mumbled his reply, and slumped across the kitchen. I kicked my shoes into the pile by the back door.

"Hey Aaron..." I hesitated, wishing now that I had said no to Luke.

"We can still at least do lunch though, right?"

I stopped, not really surprised that he already knew what I was going to say, but still not happy that he had already been able to predict what I was going to say. Guilt picked at me as I recalled all of the other times he seemed to get nudged aside. He looked up at me from his cereal bowl, and smiled again. There was no anger, no crushing hurt, only a slight bit of disappointment, but mostly just resigned acceptance that I found more upsetting than anything else he could have done.

"Don't worry about it. You're a busy person. I'll live."

I mussed his hair, attempting to lighten the mood and my guilt. I promised myself firmly that I would make it up to him.

"Thanks squirt."

He gave me a look when I called him squirt. He was three inches taller than me now, but he was four years younger. I liked to remind him, mostly because he tended to freak out, and I found it amusing. His look changed though, when I mentioned his birthday.

"Next weekend we'll make it up. It should be quite interesting..."

I let the sentence trail off teasingly, and smirked as I started brewing a pot of coffee; pretending to ignore him as he started making impatient noises. Derek stumbled in, yawning and collapsing in a chair.

"Finally up then, lazybones."

He grunted, and dropped his head on the table. He's even less of a morning person than Aaron. Aaron threw a balled up napkin at me, which I caught easily. He narrowed his eyes at my innocent smile, and I could almost hear him sifting through his mind for leverage to make me tell him. Luckily for me, Aaron didn't have a deceptive bone in his body, and still hasn't been able to make me tell him something I didn't want to. That was more my forte. Finally he gave up with a sigh, pushing away from the table.

"Fine then. Keep your secrets. How about we go on a picnic. I don't want fast food. Let's plan to leave in about an hour?"

Derek left for his own job half an hour later, and Aaron came up to me as I was looking out the window.

"The dream was weird last night."

"I know."

The man had been arguing with the woman, which didn't usually happen. She rarely fought back enough for him to bother making it worthy of the title 'argument'. He had been so angry, and the woman had been crying, but standing her ground. She was holding a bundle close to her body, and there was the silhouette of a small child hiding behind her skirts. She had been pleading and begging with him over something. By the gestures, I guessed it was the children. The man had raised his hand, grasping the woman's wrist, jerking her forward. The child by her skirts had come into view, just long enough for me to catch a glimpse of unruly dark hair hanging in a pale face. I had started awake, sitting upright and shaking before I could make out any features.

"I was so afraid, and angry. Angry that he was treating her that way, and afraid...That man is so powerful, I can feel it."

"And the woman." He added softly. "I could feel her pain. She was grieving over something. I hurt for her."

We were quiet, lost in our own thoughts. We never got the whole feel of the dream. It seemed split, he got half, and I got the rest. I had been nearly overwhelmed by the anger there, and had felt...almost hatred toward the man. When I said so, Aaron looked at me closely, and I knew he was gauging my mood, then deciding to leave it alone.

"Where is this stuff coming from?"

We had asked this question over and over. We had spent uncounted hours brainstorming over that question and had never come up with an explanation that we both agreed on. Neither of us really believed they were dreams. They were too real, too vivid; and that we both always had the same dream...it was just too much to be so simply explained. On the other hand, I had never been superstitious. Ghosts and curses and magic...they were make believe.

My head hurt just trying to sort all of it out.

"Don't think about it. Not today. Let's just relax, and pretend we are immature punks and do whatever we please." I said, and he grinned.

"Sounds good to me." He tossed a rubber band ball in the air. "Let's take a hike after we eat. Is there time for that?"

"Sure. Be packed and ready in fifteen, and we can maybe goof around in the creek. I think it's going to be warm enough today that we won't freeze."

I threw a pair of jeans, a beater, and a long sleeve into my bag, for work later, along with candy, and my usual small collection of books. Aaron teased me for it, but I liked to snack, and the books came in very handy when something unexpected came up.

The drive was short, and after a quick meal, we were tramping through the trees. I felt freer here, and safer. I could just breath better around the trees, it seemed, and they were more relaxing to be around than rushing cars and tall buildings. There was a life to them that you could feel, and it I guess I am just not a city person. The deeper we we went into the woods, and the further we wandered off of the usual trails, the more distant the rest of the world seemed and the tenseness in my shoulders that never seemed to go away lessened. I straightened my shoulders and breathed deeply, savoring the sharp scents of budding trees and thawing earth, and my head cleared of everything but this place.

We came to a secluded part of the creek where we had never been before, and I tugged off my shoes and waded in. The water was icy, and I guessed we weren't too far from the mouth of the spring. Aaron joined me quickly, following what looked like a snake as it slithered along the bank.

I watched the water as it ran over my feet, breathing in deeply, enjoying the warm, clean air. I wiggled my toes until they were under the smooth pebbles and silt of the creek bed. A breath of wind tugged at my hair, and the smells got stronger, and I lifted my face to the light streaming between the trees, feeling peaceful and completely at ease.

Then it happened.

I heard my name and the voice was unfamiliar...at first. I looked around, startled, my calm shattered. Was I hearing things now? I strained for a long moment trying to hear it again, and after a tense silence aside from the dripping water, I started to relax. As soon as I did, it came again, a whisper, that reverberated, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. I whirled, but only saw Aaron. He looked at me, brow wrinkled.

"Micah?"

"_Micah_..." I shook my head, and wondered if I had finally lost it, and developed schizophrenia or something. I had to fight to speak, as though my mouth and throat were full of sludge, and I found that I could barely move as something seemed to press on my whole body. I concentrated on trying to speak through my rising terror.

"Aar-"

A violent shudder cut me off, and the pressure released, giving way to a pulling feeling as though I had suddenly walked off a cliff. The voice spoke again, and while I recognized it was familiar , I couldn't place exactly where.

_"Micah..."_

Colors began to quiver, then bleed like paint seeping over the lines of a sketch until there was nothing but a dizzying mess of uncoordinated color with muffled incomprehensible sounds. I was beginning to feel sick, and as though my inside were pushing to get free, when everything abruptly faded to black, and the last thing I heard was Aaron's panicked voice calling my name.

Then there was nothing.


End file.
